Season 1 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Do Bees Feel Pain?

We often expect to be on the receiving end of pain - whether from a broken elbow or from the tail-end of a bee. But what about bees? Do small creatures feel pain? Is it just a matter of defining pain in a way that we can claim bees feel no pain - or that they do, indeed feel pain? Or is the sensation of feeling pain so complicated that it defies a definition? Do bees simply react without actually 'feeling' anything? Or are they as anguished as humans when they suffer injuries?

We explore this question with McGill neuroscience student Daniel Miksha so we can better understand this issue and so we can begin to recognize our potential responsibilities respecting the ethical treatment of bees.

Season 1 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Tolstoy and the Robber Bees

Leo Tolstoy was a beekeeping fanatic. He even managed to work his bees into Anna Karenina, as well as War and Peace. In this episode of About Bees, Culture & Curiosity, we take a shallow dive into deep Russian literature, and look at the conflicted life and death of Tolstoy. Our main focus is the passage from War And Peace after Napoleon enters Moscow and finds, according to Tolstoy, a city defeated and empty. Defeated and empty in the way that a robbed colony of bees is defeated and empty.

Season 1 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Myths and Legends

What we think we know might not be true.

Did you know that Einstein once warned us that without bees, humans would go extinct in four years? Did you know that honey bees are going extinct? That archeologists found 3000-year-old honey that was as good as new? That you can survive on a diet of nothing but honey? That when bees smell smoke, they get ready to fly away from their hive? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again. In this episode, we look at myths and legends about honey bees.

The beekeeping world is flooded with misinformation. It's almost impossible to turn back that tide. But let's try.